(And about eight years ago, the actor told the Advocate the nudity wasn’t even written in the original script). Back then, it was considered a bold move for him to not only appear in a film with so much queer subtext, but also to show his penis several times on camera when it hadn’t been done before, outside of pornography.
Neither did The New York Times, nor Rolling Stone.īut if you ask just about anyone who saw that film in theaters in 1980, Gere-who had only just begun to make a name for himself as a stage actor with a few small film credits-appearing fully naked was the central takeaway. Oddly enough, though, Roger Ebert’s review doesn’t mention Gere’s full-frontal nudity once. Schrader’s treatment on male loneliness is another element of the film (and in many of his following features) that was commended by critics. In the film, Gere plays an escort involved with the wife of a politician when it was first released, critics and audiences praised American Gigolo for its stylish neo-noir take on a seedy, hypersexual Los Angeles. The Unbearably Long Self-Indulgent Director's Cut crosses the line from showing abundant nudity to satirise the cliché of rock star excess in biopics to showing nudity for the sake of nudity and so finds itself as the first entry on our list.In 1980, a young Richard Gere did something never before shown in mainstream American cinema by any well-known Hollywood actor: he appeared on screen, fully nude, in multiple scenes of Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo. The theatrical release contained more than its fair share of nudity, but the unrated version released on DVD, entitled The Unbearably Long Self-Indulgent Director's Cut, doubled down on the gratuitous nudity and sex, extending a scene of Dewey's band waking up after an orgy in a crowded room of naked people, depicting Dewey reveling in even more coitus and showing Dewey picking up one of the male members of his band. While it failed to recoup its budget at the box office, Walk Hard won over critics and strong word of mouth led to a cult following and significant DVD sales.
The film satirises the gratuitous nudity and sex this trope entails by showing the titular rock star, Dewey Cox, engaging in all manners of sexual excess, including orgies and wife swapping. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox StoryĪ hilarious parody of musical biopics, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story skewered the tendency for biographical films about musicians to ignore the music and instead wallow in the excesses of the Rock 'n' Roll lifestyle. It is hardwired into our DNA to enjoy the sexual act, and it's nearly impossible to look away when we see it presented on screen.įilmmakers who portray sex and nudity in their pictures walk a fine line: if you can justify the inclusion of bare skin, like the recent Palme d'Or winner Blue Is The Warmest Colour, a feature that chronicles the love affair between an underage student and her female teacher in graphic detail, then you have earned respectability while also appealing to the baser desires of moviegoers however, if you fail to justify excessive amounts of nudity and sex in your feature, then you have crossed the line from being an artist to a purveyor of smut, like Zalman King.įor your consideration, I present a list of 9 films that crossed the line from art to smut and never looked back, movies that threw as much T & A at the screen as possible for the sake of it: 9 movies with way too much gratuitous sex and nudity.
Ever since humanity learned to doodle on the walls of the caves it called home, we have been treated to depictions of sex and the human body in art.